All posts filed under: Book of Common Prayer

The 21st Week After Trinity

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Collect: Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Saints Days: Tuesday, October 23: St. James, Brother of our Lord During the ministry of Jesus, his brothers seemed to have been resistant to Him and His claims. But something must have happened to make His brother James change his mind very early on. Perhaps it was during Jesus’s life or, it was when He appeared to James after His resurrection (1 Cor. 15:7). He was the first bishop of Jerusalem. It’s said that he looked so much like Jesus in terms of his physical features that people would go to see him so that they could see what Jesus looked like. The early church historian Hegessippus described James: He used to be found kneeling upon his knees, begging forgiveness for the people — so that the skin of his knees became hard like that of a camel’s, because …

The 19th Week After Trinity

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Collect: “O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” Saints Days: Wednesday, October 10: Saint Paulinus Most likely born in Italy at the end of the 6th century, Paulinus was among the group of missionaries sent to England by Pope Gregory in order to help Augustine of Canterbury. When Ethelburga was to marry the king Edwin, Paulinus went with the bride’s party in order to persuade King Edwin to convert to Christianity. The Venerable Bede writes, “Although Paulinus found it difficult to bring the king’s proud mind to accept the humility of the way of salvation or to accept the mystery of the life-giving cross, he nevertheless continued, by words of exhortation addressed to the people, and by words of supplication addressed to the divine compassion, to strive for the conversion of the king and his nation.” After much inner turmoil, King Edwin decided to take the Christian faith, along …

The 18th Week After Trinity

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Collect: Lord, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Saints and Feast Days: Monday, October 1: St. Remigius  Born around 438 to a noble family in Gaul, Saint Remigius was the first and greatest of the French bishops. While very young, he sought the Lord and desired to live like a hermit. For example, he found a secret apartment in his father’s castle where he would retreat whenever possible (by the 9th century, though the castle had crumbled, the apartment was still intact and venerated by pilgrim Christians). He became known and admired for his piety. When he was only twenty-two, despite his protests, he was consecrated bishop! Meanwhile, Clovis was the king of the Franks– a remarkable military leader, unifying his people when only fifteen years old. He was a pagan, married to a Christian woman name Clothilda who tried to convince her husband to believe …

How to Survive Your Sunday Shrieker

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 You sit in your pew as the priest begins, “Let us confess our sins unto Almighty God.” And behind you, a shriek, a “barbaric yawp” (as one parishioner described it) rips through the sanctuary. You say to yourself, “Lord, help us and deliver us.. And may I never have a Sunday Shrieker.” But they come to all parents, at the fullness of time, when the moment is  ripe for sanctification and shame. So, we’ve put together a guide on how to survive your Sunday Shrieker, giving you the essentials for how to identify and then react, when you encounter a Shrieker in the wild (i.e. in your own family). The Parrot No worries here — this is the imitation shriek. This is the baby’s drone as they seek to join the congregation chanting the Gloria. Everyone thinks it’s cute, so you can stay put, cheerfully (and pray that it doesn’t go downhill). The Bat This is a friendly and happy kind of shriek. Yes, it’s very high-pitched and may cause hearing loss if too close. …

Great Prayer Book Online Resources

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During Lent, I (Amanda) started a practice of knitting while listening to the Cradle of Prayer, recordings of the 1928 Prayer Book daily offices. I was surprised by how much joy and peace this practice brought to my days.  (And, I found my three year old would sometimes even quietly play and listen!) The possibility of listening to the Daily Offices — though it seems so obvious, like “why haven’t I always done this?” — has been rather revolutionary for me. So, we’ve put together a list of some great online resources and apps that may help you to “dwell richly” in the Scriptures through prayer, by means of the wise ordering of the Prayer Book. The Cradle of Prayer The Cradle of Prayer uses the 1928 Prayer Book (for those of you who aren’t Anglican, this is the version that sounds like the KJV Bible — “vouchsafe,” “succour,” and lots of “beseeching”). The best thing about the Cradle of Prayer is that they include a hymn and the canticles are sung (she cycles through the …

Prayer Habits for Parents

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Thank you to Erica Jarrett for contributing to our BCP in Daily Life series. Erica Jarrett is a family doctor and mother of one daughter. She currently works with Trinity on the Border, a non-profit ministry of the Anglican Church in North America which she and her husband Michael founded in South Texas. She blogs at liturgyoflife.com. My daughter was born one year prior to me finishing my residency as a Family Medicine doctor. I remember well those foggy nights, driving home at midnight to nurse her before returning to the hospital to work till morning. Under the strain of constant exhaustion, I tried to reach out to God but wasn’t sure how — my old habits of prayer and quiet time seemed to be impossible to maintain in my new life as a working mom. For many, like me, spending time in personal devotion is what may define our faith. But juggling the realities of childrearing or fast-paced careers (or both), often eliminates any routine which requires extended time at the table sipping coffee, or focus enough to read …

Daily Prayer, “By the Book”

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Thanks to Fr. Isaac Rehburg for submitting this guest post to our BCP in Daily Life series. Fr. Isaac is the curate at All Saints Anglican Church in San Antonio, TX, where he lives with his wife and daughter. When out of his collar, he works as a residential real estate appraiser, or plays music with his family.  As a bi-vocational priest, I spend at least as much time “in the world” as I do working in the Church. One of my favorite aspects of the Book of Common Prayer is how its pattern of living out the Christian faith is designed to work equally well for folks in “regular life” as for folks who spend most of their time in and around the church building. While one of my duties as a priest is to pray the Daily Offices, I have long found them to be much more than a duty; they are a means of grace whereby I meet with the Lord and hear from him in the Scriptures, Psalms, and formal prayers of our tradition. …

A Baptist and the BCP

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Thank you to Jordan Riggle for his guest submission to our series on the BCP in Daily Life. Jordan  and his wife Katrina live in Dayton, Ohio with three children. He’s a writer and entrepreneur, and she’s a baker and a painter. They’ve fallen deeply in love with simple, liturgical, gospel-centered living. In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I aren’t Anglicans, we don’t attend an Anglican church, nor does our church use the Book of Common Prayer. None of our friends use it. In fact, the only other family we personally know who uses the Book of Common Prayer on a regular basis would be Amanda’s, one of the editors here at The Homely Hours. However, my wife and I use the Book of Common Prayer with our children twice a day, every day. A year and a half ago we began following the liturgical calendar and began hearing about this thing called the Book of Common Prayer. Since then, the Book of Common Prayer has slowly worked itself into the very warp …

There’s a Prayer for That

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Thank you to Kelli Ann Wilson for submitting this guest post to our series on Family Prayer. Kelli Ann lives in Walpole, NH with her husband Damian and their two children. She works as a writer, and in her free time enjoys reading, gardening, and photography. Kelli blogs at OurCommonHours.com, and shares her family’s faith journey through the seasons and the Christian year at AroundtheYear.org. My dad has always been great at off-the-cuff prayers. No matter what the occasion—Easter dinner or just a family meal—he can pull together a prayer on the spot that is both authentic and meaningful. I am not blessed with my dad’s talent for spontaneous prayer, but I can still offer up words of praise or petitions for intercession, thanks to the Book of Common Prayer. It may seem like a non-sequitur to link my inability to pray with the prayer book, but I assure you that the “Prayers and Thanksgivings” section of the BCP has saved me from myself many, many times. Sometimes it feels like the authors were anticipating my …

Evening Prayer with a Xylophone

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This post continues our series on the BCP in Daily Life. If you’re interested in submitting a reflection, email a 400-600 word post to thehomelyhours@gmail.com. I find it really helpful to read what other families do in terms of daily prayer, in order to know what is reasonable to expect and also to be inspired with what is possible. So, I thought I would write about my little family’s evening prayer routine, as an example of the very minimum, the least difficult or inspiring  (a beginner family’s daily prayer). We have a 3 year old and an 8 month old. We began realizing it would be possible to actually incorporate our toddler into evening prayer Advent of 2015, when she was almost 2 and she looked forward every evening to lighting (and attempting to blow out) the Advent candles (see video below. ) So every evening, we turn off all of our lamps, we light the candle that we got last year for Candlemas (with Bley’s lovely printable, which our daughter has so enjoyed), and we kneel …